Opinion: Congress Urged to Tighten Rules on Art Museums

The fine line that art museums walk between charity and the marketplace is becoming a problematic contradiction, according to an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal.

Although museums benefit from charitable tax breaks, the article contends they operate much like for-profit companies: selling art into the marketplace in order to acquire new works, renting spaces for parties, or renting out their collections to private galleries.

Eric Gibson, a writer for the newspaper, urges Congress to reevaluate how museums and their collections should be treated, stating, “Because of their transcendent importance, museum objects occupy a position outside the pressures of the marketplace. Yet more and more museums are treating these objects as financial assets that they can tap at any time.”

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